The Cat Sitter And The Canary

15

As Mr. Wincock led me inside the house, Mrs. Wincock was standing slack-jawed in the middle of the living room, just next to the tarp of harpsichord innards, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. She turned and said, “Oh, dear.”

The reporter had perfectly coiffed brunette hair perched on top of her head like a lacquered helmet. She was gesturing at the scene behind her, which at first looked like nothing more than an empty roadside with a dense woods behind it, but then the camera panned around to reveal a deputy squad car, its lights flashing blue and red.

The reporter stepped into the frame and nodded earnestly. “What we know so far is that a morning jogger was making his way down this peaceful stretch of road when he was nearly run down by a car that came speeding out of this driveway. It took off toward the center of town. We don’t know yet what kind of car it was, but as soon as we get more details we’ll let you know.”

All I could think was how impossibly overinflated the woman’s breasts were. They seemed to defy all reason and logic, squeezed as they were into an impossibly tight silvery blouse like two Goodyear blimps floating side by side in front of her body. I wondered that they didn’t each have their own LED display panel, with blinking text announcing the end of dignified reporting as we know it. Surely, I thought to myself, this was not what Mr. Wincock wanted me to see.

I said, “What’s happening?”

He said, “A jogger found a dead body on a private lane.” He turned to me. “They said it’s down on the south end of the Key.”

I nodded.

“They said it’s off Midnight Pass … by Turtle Beach.”

Just then, the reporter pointed to the driveway beyond the squad car, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Mrs. Wincock said, “Dixie, didn’t you say you live down there?”

* * *

I’d like to think I said something like, “Okay, thanks for letting me know,” or, at the very least, “I need to go now,” but I don’t remember saying a word. I’d also like to think I turned and walked calmly around Mr. Wincock’s harpsichord project and then made my way out the front door with measured aplomb, but I didn’t. I stormed right through all the various piles of parts and burst through the front door like a bat out of hell, where I collided into Deputy Marshall so hard it nearly toppled him to the ground.

Blocking my way, he said, “Miss Hemingway, where are you going?”

I said, “I need to get home.”

He held his hands out in front of me like he was calming a rabid dog. “Now, hold on. I just received a request to keep you here until we know exactly what’s happening.”

My eyes must have looked like they were about to pop out of my head, because he immediately took one step back and said, “Okay. Let’s don’t panic.”

I looked down at the ground and thought for a moment. I was beginning to think somebody in the sheriff’s office had given Marshall a heads-up about me. I repeated myself, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible, “I need. To get. Home.”

That stretch of road behind the reporter on the TV—I had recognized it almost immediately. The sea grape and moss-laden oaks should have been a dead giveaway, but as soon as I saw the rusty old PRIVATE DRIVEWAY sign that sits at the top of our lane, my body had switched into autopilot.

Marshall adjusted his belt. “I think it’ll be safer for everyone involved if we wait right here until further notice. Got it?”

I said, “That’s a great idea. You do that.”

I steered past him and headed for the Bronco, but I hadn’t gotten far when I felt his hand on my left shoulder. I spun around to face him, knocking his arm out of the way.

I said, “Deputy, everyone left on this earth that I care about is in that house. I’m going there now. You can help me, or you can arrest me for speeding when we get there.” I hadn’t felt this mix of rage and fear in a very long time. Every muscle in my body was as tightly drawn as a cat poised for attack, but when I spoke, my voice was calm and even. “Got it?”

I didn’t even look back.

I jumped in the Bronco and fired the engine. Pulling out of the driveway, I caught a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Wincock in their doorway. Mrs. Wincock had Mrs. Heedles in her arms, and they were all three watching me, motionless and wide-eyed, like they were watching the climactic scene of a horror movie.

I screeched to a stop at the corner of the main road and took a deep breath, telling myself to keep my eyes open and my wits about me. I knew I wouldn’t be doing anybody any favors if I crashed and burned trying to get there, and I certainly didn’t want to put anybody else in danger, but every cell in my body was telling me to get home as fast as possible, no matter the cost.

Just then, a blur of colored lights streamed by on my left, and the next thing I knew Marshall’s squad car was in the middle of the intersection, with cars in both directions rolling to a stop as the wail of his siren broke through the deafening buzz in my head. Marshall leaned out his window and pointed directly at me. Then, as if cracking an imaginary whip, he signaled me to follow, and I stepped on the gas.

With Marshall leading the way, I’m pretty sure we shot through town faster than anyone’s ever driven from one end of the island to the other. Less than two minutes later, we’d gone through the traffic light at Stickney Point, where there was a line of cars in front of us about a half mile long, like a stalled parade headed south. There wasn’t room enough on the shoulder to pass them, so Marshall veered into the oncoming lane, his lights and sirens shifting into full-out emergency mode. From then on, we had a clear path.

There were no cars coming north.

At some point, my field of vision narrowed to a deep, dark tunnel, as if I was peering through the ragged aperture of a homemade pinhole camera and all I could see were the flashing lights of Marshall’s cruiser in front of me. Everything else turned black and fuzzy around the edges. I kept hearing Michael say he was going for a jog, and how Paco had said he’d noticed a rabbit’s nest along the driveway and that he had some carrot tops for them. As we got closer, I caught the occasional glimpse of people gathered outside their cars or standing on the sidewalk, craning their necks to see what in the world was happening up ahead.

I saw the news van first, bathed in a sea of emergency lights. There was a cameraman with his back against the hood, his handheld video camera perched on his shoulder, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, and the brunette reporter I’d seen on the Wincocks’ television screen was checking her lipstick in the reflection of the van’s back window.

As Deputy Marshall rolled up, I pulled in behind him and immediately jumped out, not even bothering to cut the engine. There were two sheriff’s cars on either side of our driveway, and a couple of Sarasota police officers holding traffic. I realized Deputy Marshall must have radioed ahead and requested they keep the northbound lane closed until we arrived.

I hadn’t gotten ten feet when someone grabbed me from behind. It was Michael, dressed in the same shorts and tank top he was wearing that morning, and the sight of him nearly made me collapse right there in the road. Before I could even get a word out, he stopped me.

“Okay. We’re all fine. Ethan and Paco are down at the house talking to the cops right now.”

I said, “What happened?”

“I don’t know yet. Somebody was jogging by and they almost got run down by a car coming out of our lane. That’s when he noticed something about midway down to the house … it’s a body.”

I said, “You saw it?”

“Yeah.” He paused, his eyes going glassy. “It’s a woman. Blond. Right in the middle of the lane by the magnolia. There’s blood.”

I felt pressure beginning to build in the space behind my eyes as I struggled for words. “I just … I don’t believe it. I was at a client’s house, and I saw it on the news. I didn’t … I didn’t know who it was. I thought…”

The idea that somebody might have been stalking me was hard enough to deal with, but it paled in comparison to the idea that someone might have hurt Michael or Paco or Ethan. Michael grabbed me around the shoulders and hugged me tight.

He said, “Yeah, well if you think that was bad … imagine what I thought.”

I pulled away. There were tears in his bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, Michael…”

He hugged me again. “Okay. Alright, we’re fine. Let’s just not think about it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.” I could feel my body reeling as the adrenaline began to catch up with me. “I think I better sit down.”

We went over to the side of the road and found a spot in the grass opposite the driveway. They were letting a slow trickle of traffic through now, and I felt like a monkey in a cage as the cars rolled by, the passengers inside gawking at us. The sky overhead was bright blue, with two mountain-size white clouds gliding east to west, as if nothing was happening at all and everything was perfectly fine in the universe. We sat there in silence, watching the various officers milling around, coming and going up the lane from our house.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I turned to Michael and said, “Why is this happening?”

He shook his head and sighed. “I wish I knew.”

“I mean, there’s no way, right?”

“No way … what?”

I waved my hand around. “All this. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

His eyes stopped on a spot across the road, and I could tell by his face he’d already been thinking the exact same thing. First, Sara Potts, with my name on her body, and now … not three hundred feet from our front door …

Michael said, “Okay. Let’s not jump to any conclusions until we know exactly what’s going on.”

I looked up to see a trio of men coming around the curve of our driveway. It was only then that I noticed the shape in the middle of the lane, about a hundred yards down. It was too far to see clearly, but there were two deputies carefully unfolding a blue tarp, which I figured was meant to protect the body until a forensics team arrived to investigate.

I could tell by his profile that one of the men coming toward us was Paco, and despite the fact that Michael had already told me he was fine, I felt a muscle in the middle of my throat let go at the sight of him. As they passed the spot where the body was, he kept his face turned. One of the men stopped, and now it was just Paco coming up the lane, along with another taller, skinnier man. It took me a second to realize who it was: Matthew Carthage, the blond boy-detective I’d met in front of Caroline’s house, wearing the same faded jeans and white oxford dress shirt. I looked around for Detective McKenzie’s unmarked SUV but couldn’t find it.

Paco had a canvas shopping bag from our local health-food store slung over his shoulder. He walked across the road and straight into my arms, hugging me as Michael mutely patted both our backs. I could tell he was struggling to keep it all together, but I tried not to let on. It’s important for Michael to feel he has things under control, especially in a situation like this.

Detective Carthage was standing a few feet back, typing something into his cell phone.

I scanned Paco’s face. “Who is she?”

He shook his head. “They don’t know yet. I didn’t recognize her at all. Middle-aged, white, nicely dressed. There’s no purse or ID or anything…”

“Where’s Ethan?”

“Looking for Ella. She’s hiding, probably just freaked out by all the activity, or by what happened here. Whatever it was…” His voice trailed away as he glanced first at Detective Carthage, then at Michael.

Michael’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Carthage stepped forward and cleared his throat, his neck suddenly breaking out in splotches of scarlet as he leveled me with his pale green eyes.

“There’s another note.”